Since we recorded this episode all in one room AND had a reference to our witch in a box, we decided we needed a wine note dedicated to, yup, wine in a box.
In each podcast episode, we bring you a note about wine because wine is a main form of sustenance for vampires when they’re not drinking, you know, blood. It also happens that Deborah Harkness, Renaissance woman that she is, is an award-winning wine blogger and wine enthusiast. If you’ve never read Deborah’s wine blog, “Good Wine Under $20,” you should have a look. While she doesn’t write it now, it is a reminder that apparently there’s nothing this woman can’t do.
We have two more reasons we like to include a wine note in each episode. We really like wine; we like it a lot. We also happen to have our own personal sommelier, Bayard. This man knows his wine and he loves sharing his knowledge and making wine accessible to everyone. Bayard is a founding partner at Crafted Brands and we love learning from him.
Many hear the phrase wine in a box and assume the wine will be like the stuff we drank in high school. This ASWW wine note, an idea we came up with as a reference to the witch in a box and because what says lady friends getting together more than wine…in a box or not…will prove that snobbish thought wrong.
Take it away Bayard.
Hey there guys, it’s Bayard. This time we are going to be talking about boxed wine. Yes, that’s right. Boxed wine. I never thought I would be talking about that on this podcast, but we’re going to be talking about the pros and cons of wine in a box and whether or not it’s good.
Franzia started this years ago, but since then, a lot of companies have entered the boxed wine arena like Bota Box and Black Box that are quite good. For some reason people equate boxed wine with low quality wine, but that’s not always the case. Boxed wine can be just as good as wine that comes out of a bottle and there are many factors to consider before determining a wine’s worth based on appearances. Both wine in a box and bottled wine have the potential to be of poor quality or of great quality.
Another factor in determining the quality of the wine is you, the taster. You may have a different idea of what a good wine tastes like than your neighbor. Therefore, if you both buy the same bottle or box of wine, you may both have different ideas of its quality. You might think that a dry white wine is of low quality, whereas your neighbor might love it. You might think that a dry red is horrible, but your neighbor might love it. Keep that in mind as you’re determining a wine’s worth.
I think you ought to just grab a couple of boxed wines and try them out right next to bottles and see which one is best. But here we get into the pros and cons. Some pros of bottled wine is that it can age. If you like to cellar it, if you like to collect, you can age bottled wine. You can’t really do that with boxed wine.
Secondly, you get a lot of choices with bottled wine because it’s been the standard for so long. A vast majority of wineries only produce bottled wine and not boxed, so the options are endless. The last one that I’ll touch on is that, once you open a bottle of wine, the clock is ticking. You have a short amount of time to finish that wine. That means you either have to drink more than you wanted, which let’s call it what it is, is not necessarily a bad thing, not open the bottle at all, or toss some of the wine out.
The flip side is boxed wine can last from four to six weeks, so that means that you have a long time to finish the wine. This also means you don’t have to drink more wine than you want. I’ll close out with one more thing. Store boxed wine just as you would bottled wine. If it’s white, keep it in the refrigerator. If it’s red, keep it in a place that is not near anything that emits heat or direct sunlight.